John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)
Study for Three Dancing Figures for the Rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1916-1921
Charcoal on paper , 47.6 x 63 cm (18 3/4 x 24 13/16 in.)
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Short Gallery
Commentary
In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890–1962), a young, Black elevator attendant, at Boston’s Hotel Vendome. McKeller posed for most of the figures—both male and female—in Sargent’s murals in the Museum of Fine Arts. The painter transformed McKeller into white gods and goddesses, creating soaring allegories of the liberal arts that celebrated the recent expansion of the city’s premier civic museum. Sargent then gave several preparatory drawings of McKeller to Isabella Stewart Gardner, ensuring their preservation in perpetuity.
Model Anna Wendell posed for this rapid sketch, a study for the central twisting nude in Sargent’s plaster relief of Three Dancing Figures. An inscription provides Wendell’s name and address so she could be called back. For other female forms, Sargent relied on male models including McKeller, reimagining his body with prosthetic breasts shaped from cheesecloth.
Model Anna Wendell posed for this rapid sketch, a study for the central twisting nude in Sargent’s plaster relief of Three Dancing Figures. An inscription provides Wendell’s name and address so she could be called back. For other female forms, Sargent relied on male models including McKeller, reimagining his body with prosthetic breasts shaped from cheesecloth.